Spark Up A Friendship With The Animals In Lost Ember

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It’s Deus Ex Day, and the press is full of smog and people with knife-elbows. So here’s something to bring you back to nature. Lost Ember [official site] is an upcoming adventure that lets you walk in the paws of a possessive wolf. That is, a wolf who can possess other animals. He can leap into parrots and fly through the canopy, or dive into a fish and swim around in murky water. There’s some mysterious ruins of an ancient race littering the world, crumbling and overgrown, and the wolf wants to know where all the people went. It’s all very pretty, so come and take a gander at the teaser trailer.

That music is very Coldplay. Ot is it Keane-ish? I honestly don’t know anymore. But it looks rather soothing, especially the chance to flap around in a big flock of colourful parrots. There’s also a mole that can dig from one place to another, and the ‘ember’ of the title, a companion that will float around with you and do special tricks, suggesting some form of mild puzzling as you travel through the ruins of the old world. A people known as the Inrahsi once lived here, raising arrogant temples and building a once-thriving capital city, only to pull a major Ozymandias. Which definitely grants the game a bit of a Journey vibe.

The developers, Mooneye Studios, are planning a Kickstarter soon but are asking folks to subscribe to their own newsletter first.

RPS is obliged to add, for the record, that the best possession mechanics were those of Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus, a game which allowed the player to psychically possess their own farts. That’s all, carry on.

I’ve often wished there were more video games where you play as animals. Not anthropomorphic bandicoots or what have you, just actual animals. Seems like something video games could handle really well that other kinds of media would struggle with. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for this.